3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

This First-Year Seminars asks how social and technological change are related by reading speculative fiction together with secondary sources from the humanities and social sciences. The imagined worlds we will examine feature technologies that intervene in biological reproduction, and technologies that affect the division of labor by which society reproduces itself, allowing us to probe the relationship between technology, gender, and work. By analyzing imagined worlds conjured by speculative thinkers, we will ask how fictional works mediate between imagination and reality. Students will also experiment with speculative methods—including games, creative writing exercises, and critical design—to probe the social and ethical dimensions of emerging technologies. Potential texts include short fiction by Octavia Butler, T. C. Boyle, Isaac Asimov, Alice Sheldon, and N.K. Jemisin, as well as Boots Riley’s 2018 film Sorry to Bother You.